Product placements are usually a gold mine both for brands and movies: Brands get exposure (though I wonder if people actually walk out of the theater with the seed of a new consumerist desire insidiously planted into their brains, or just shrug at yet another logo shoved into their faces) and movies get funding. While some can be painfully obvious, it's usually a pretty beneficial partnership for all parties involved.

In #Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy 2, however, there's one use of a product that didn't seem to please its owner so much — and who's to blame them? When Microsoft's late attempt at an answer to the iPod, the Zune media player, was released in 2006, it wasn't actually a success. After various hardware and software iterations, it was discontinued in 2012.

Even Microsoft Would Have Wanted Peter Quill To Get An iPod

So when Kraglin gifts Peter a Zune at the end of the new Guardians of the Galaxy, it might just be a nostalgic nod to the era of portable music players that couldn't make phone calls, but it feels a little like a jab at the company's failed product. In a live Q&A on his Facebook page, director #JamesGunn revealed that Microsoft wasn't exactly delighted to see the Zune appear in his movie.

Still, he insists that no matter the platform, what's important is that the music in the movie brings the characters together:

"Peter Quill almost ignores Baby Groot throughout the entire movie. This is important. I think that Peter Quill is, in many ways, a complete absent father to this son that they have onboard. ... At the end of the film, Peter Quill gets this Zune from Yondu, and he sits down to play it. ... And as he starts to listen to the music, instead of it being a moment that is selfish, Baby Groot crawls into his lap, and as we see Peter Quill looking down at Baby Groot, we see a father's love for his son."

There you have it, Microsoft. If the Zune can make things better for the adorable Baby Groot, maybe it isn't such a terrible product after all?

What was your favorite song in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2?

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